well that's going to do it for now but for more on the stories we cover go to youtube dot com slash r.t. america or r.t. dot com slash usa. and. below in welcome to crosstalk i'm peter lavelle barack obama when a decisive victory returning him to the white house for another four years what accounts for this victory was it a well run campaign in changing demographics or was it a campaign for the republicans to lose does obama now have a solid mandate and what is the future of the g.o.p. . cross-talk american politics after the election i'm joined by two crosstalk usual suspects stephen lesser in new york he is host of the blog talk radio show making

sense with steve lesser and a partner at democratic spring strategies and in paris we cross to rachel mars than she is a political communications strategist and a syndicated columnist all right folks you both put on the program before so you understand how crosstalk rules work steve if i go to you first what is the primary reason the number one reason why your man and everyone knows that your man won the election. well there's two or three main reasons but if you want to know the number one reason i think that the american people gave president obama credit for coming to office at a very difficult time when the economy was losing eight hundred thousand jobs a month and it really looked like the financial system was going to completely collapse and he turned that around now maybe you could say that not when you know more money much more needs to be done we wish we were a little bit their position that we were now but i think the american people when they finally looked at it and said i have to make a decision they gave him credit for turning things around and starting to create jobs again i think the republicans unfortunately tried to create this alternate

reality and we see this again and again with them trying to create an alternate reality where time began january twenty first two thousand and nine so everything was his fault but i think the american people ultimately rejected that and they gave credit for president obama turning the ship around ok richard if i go to you in paris to be all things being equal it should have been a cakewalk for romney to win the election given the economy i mean people voted that way to a vote about jobs inflation growth it should have been a cakewalk why did he lose them. well i think it's a little more simple than what steve pointed out i think historically we've always seen that it's difficult to beat an incumbent they always have the advantage going into a reelection so did have that working for them and i actually think that the the the state of the global economy worked in obama's favor in the sense that it was really difficult for americans or anyone else to argue that the economy was strickly something that he could have controlled and the fact that he really hasn't

been able to do much with it and there's really no no proof that that he's done a saying stellar about the economic situation in the united states in fact he's used taxpayer money to try to bail them out of that situation really not to much avail but i think the fact that the entire world is with the exception of maybe canada and a couple of other countries that have managed to weather the storm fairly well i think the fact that everybody else is an equally as bad of shape has really played in his favor and. mitt romney it's just it's he was no or all right in the sense that everybody thought and there were a lot of media. commentators who are arguing that mitt romney given the state of the economy it could be another reagan carter where ronald reagan was able to beat jimmy carter in a poor economic climate and the reason that didn't happen and the reason why mitt romney really was no ronald reagan is because we're all reagan connected with voters he was an actor he had that ability to even you know even though he. might

not understand or voters might not be able to connect with his his life style ronald reagan's life style i mean obviously he was he was very well off but at the same time he was able to to connect with them on a very personal level that twinkle in his eyes they feel that they were lied to and be able to connect with democrat with democratic crossover democratic independent voters who he appeal to mitt romney didn't have that appeal so it wasn't the same kind of you know steve i mean i'm kind of neutral here on this one ok but i'll give . you're a man what credit for he's a great campaigner i don't know if he's a great president i don't know if he's a great politician but he's a great campaigner he was just more likable than romney i think you'd agree with that but the third point at least. actually i think is personally much much more likable than mitt romney the final exit polls actually show that romney was actually more likable than president obama that's actually something that floored me but to rachel's point i think that she's right that the global economy affects

the united states a lot more than americans realize but but see that's the thing is that the average american on the street doesn't doesn't go around thinking wow the global economy is affecting this country so the president can't do very much i don't think the average american really spends that much time thinking about what's going on in the rest of the world i just really understand it if that didn't understand it and it was saying anything that goes. steve go ahead. i'm not sure that they were really thinking about that at all but i just think they weren't buying what mitt romney and the republicans were saying about a fundamental level i think that the republicans spent the last three or four years really trying to demonize him they called him an evil marxist socialist whatever and i think i think that in the and at the end of the day when americans went to the polls they didn't buy that image of barack obama and i think i think the republicans hurt themselves by not ever trying to work with him at all on any level on any issue and i think that really hurt them and it will be interesting to see if

they if they learn that lesson in the next two to four years we'll get to that in the second half of the program what do you think about that rachel i mean the republicans g.o.p. they just would you wouldn't work with them obstructionist all the way do you think they were punished in the election for that. no and i think mitt romney did a pretty good job of divorcing himself from any of the commentary that kind of came up from maybe some of the grassroots g.o.p. members and some of the individual members of congress in the senate on the republican side todd akin being a prime example of that really made a comment about legitimate rape and how one's body has a way to reject that so that pregnancy doesn't occur he did a really good job of denouncing that and saying hey look that's not my my thing and i don't agree with that and they hold him on that and. and i think you know granted some of that didn't help and some of that rhetoric does bleed into a presidential campaign and it all kind of gets mixed into to the the public conscience because people don't follow politics like we follow politics the average

american is busy living their daily life and all they hear are little bits and pieces of commentary and things like that certainly don't help but i think ultimately what we're looking at is an incumbent who is facing reelection and have the benefit of being an incumbent i don't think it really had anything to do with anything stellar he's done because there really isn't much to address on an individual scale in terms of issues that he's really. tackled that that he. point to to say look i did this and we're better off for it there really isn't much in that regard and we've seen in the wake of the election that suddenly the markets are showing that there's a lot of concern about this fiscal cliff and the four trillion dollars that obama and and is going to have to push through in order to. reduction for term cars and. a recession before we talk about the future steve i go back to you i mean let's look at the demographics of this ok and this is

a tipping point in many ways and and and maybe this is what the g.o.p. doesn't understand and maybe the democrats accidentally understand in their favor ok can you speak to that about the demographics of it because we have hispanics and women didn't vote for great numbers i mean you know they just missed their target. well you know alec baldwin tweeted something this morning he said when you have to ask about the election results and you ask did the rape guy win and the response is you know which one i think your card is in trouble right now and that's part of the that's part of the problem that's probably the problem that's part of the problem that the republicans have this time now believe it or not a lot of women in the swing states there was that this is one of the interesting things that came out of the exit polls women in the swing states number one issue why they voted and who they voted for was abortion i'm actually shocked to see that that that happened in any demographic but the republicans really. don't really understand the american break the make up of america anymore i think there's

a tremendous amount of latinos now that we have in this country whites are not going to be able the majority very much longer you know women are asserting themselves in greater numbers in politics we have twenty women senators that are going to be taking their seats this january and i think republicans really miss out on trying to appeal to women and trying to appeal to latinos latinos who are absolutely horrified with some of the things coming out of mitt romney's mouth with regard to immigration this idea that will self deport documented immigrants will self deport because we'll make sure that there's no way for them to find a job you know so i think latinos were disappointed by some of the things about obama didn't it was an opportunity there for republicans they just couldn't go there i think parts of their base parts of their base are present preventing them from being able to go there and i don't i don't see any path for them to get there and hold their coalition together i think this is going to be an ongoing problem i looked at the total vote totals by the way peter for the last two presidential

elections republicans have never gotten above fifty nine thousand votes in both the nine million votes in both of the last two elections president barack obama has exceeded sixty million votes i think there's a threshold now that we can see that republicans can't get beyond the can't get beyond around forty eight percent of the american electorate because. some of these new demographic realities ok rich would you like to react to that i mean demographics is a really important issue here now sure yeah i mean well it's not to say that the g.o.p. has no ability to appeal to latino voters i mean we saw that with george w. bush when he was governor of texas we've seen that with his brother jeb bush when he was governor of florida i mean they had a very clear clear appeal to latino voters and i don't think it's it's fair as well to say that latino's and minorities only vote democrat and they're only their only liberal minded i think it's one thing to say that you know there are undocumented latinos who vote in favor of the democratic party and perhaps that's in their in their interest and perhaps the increasing number of. documented workers is an issue

in that regard but i used to run campaigns in in minority writings in canada and i know for a fact that legitimate immigrants who came. came to the country legitimately through the right channels were actually very very conservative and didn't embrace the liberal democratic left wing ideals that i think perhaps it's not so much a changing demographic of an increased an increasing number of latinos and minorities that perhaps an increasing number of undocumented. workers or not just workers but you know basically immigrants who are coming not through the right channels but but through other means and and maybe maybe that's it i don't know but it's i don't think it's a it's accurate to say that there is no appeal in the g.o.p. to to minorities for women i think that's a bit of a different story i've as a woman who's sympathetic to the g.o.p.

i've had my issue with rachel i'm going to. be all getting underway for women who are going to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on what's happening in american politics state with our team. if you want to go. to. an assault rifle. i shoot despite. the. rain all snow. on done no fadia feel free to make use of the one who can use the trigger on the most reliable income of the

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welcome back to crossfire computable remind you we're talking about u.s. politics after obama's victory. ok rachel i'd like to go back to you in paris and what's going to happen with the g.o.p. moving forward because it seems to me that you know i i think most people who watch

this program know my politics ok and i disagree with a lot with romney had to say but there's some other issues on the economy that you know make perfect sense here but it's really what hurt him is his own party because he wasn't conservative enough because mitt romney is a moderate ok a moderate and you're right george bush was elected by these same people ok so i mean is it really the republican party's problem because it has it's tea party members and we have the fiscal cliff coming up and you know it's just you know obama isn't an easy situation to say i don't have anybody to talk to and he'll be right. well i think they have to go back to the drawing board and they have to revamp their entire platform they have to decide what's important to address because i think what the public is saying to a certain extent in this election and i don't think it's the first time they've expressed this is that really there are better things to care about than just social issues that affect people in the home i think because the global economic situation is just so overwhelming and historically people have turned to the g.o.p.

i mean with the ronald reagan carter election turn to the republican party to address economic situations when they are in dire straits and this should have been a cakewalk for them for that reason but there were social issues that kept popping up and social conservatism that kept kind of bleeding into the into the debate and and i think perhaps there was some sentiment among ticket already among independents or voters that really are the mushy middle i guess of the electorate that they really don't have much of an interest there's not much of an appetite for addressing that particularly in this climate when we have a global economic crisis when when there are you know domestic policy issues to deal with there are a lot more important things to deal with than issues like abortion and what happens in people's private homes and to gay marriage and that kind of thing is one point maybe that we had the luxury to deal with those things but now it's not the case and i think they might be paying a bit of a price for that you know steve it seems i mean looking at the election cycle is this the republicans who's just had this the tenacity to shoot themselves in the

foot over and over and over again and i'm saying that because it's not because obama is so great in the east so smart to manage the greatest agenda and just get the guys he was running up against just made before out of themselves every few weeks. they sure did you know my partisan leanings are pretty well known to you peter you know obviously i'm a democrat but every democracy i don't care where you are needs a minimum of two better better patel even more but at least two viable reality based parties otherwise democracy doesn't flourish and i'm looking to the republican party to see ok what kinds of things are you going to bring to the table now we do have this fiscal cliff looming we need solutions we need everybody to be able to work together the republicans in the house can't do things on them on their own democrats in the senate and president obama can't do things on their own we've got to come together and fix this thing or this country is really going to be in big trouble that it goes way back on partisan issues so where what are republicans

going to do so john boehner came yesterday he had a discussion at a press conference and he basically said the republicans are going to budge on any issue tax wise or spending wise so where does that leave us i mean we're we're in big trouble and i don't i don't understand that attitude we've got to get some of these economic issues resolved or the whole ship goes down rachel is going to really listen this is rostov go ahead you can do i heard that right i heard you know with paris go ahead rachel. i think we have to get out of this this paradigm that we're dealing with right now because everybody's so focused on certain issues and this is one of the reasons why as somebody who was living in north america lived on wall street in new york city one of the reasons why i came to europe because i just found that it was that like a dialogue among deaf people and it was constant and it's just this talking point kind of mentality that you know and everyone's focused on two or three things at a time and then the media cycle sweeps those things through and another few issues come out and nothing is ever addressed on a greater scale on a larger scale by looking at something that's more important than all of these

political issues and given time and that is the world markets the world economy and i think it's a matter of the republicans getting outside of the beltway outside of the washington bubble and to think about the greater global issues in the global economy and the global market and to figure out how to work with it rather than try to fight it and you know the only time we ever hear about the global market is in terms of outsourcing jobs we don't hear about foreign direct investments that might be possible to grow the pie bigger for everybody american companies could be doing that sort of thing for example we don't hear about you know we hear a lot for example about bailouts and how and how the government is barack obama's tons of money into into new technology new energy and that sort of thing develop new energy and we don't hear about the possibility of maybe responding to a demand of say the saudi arabian government that's looking to build a solar power plant and could very very well perhaps use an american company that

would be interested in tinkering with that kind of thing that maybe has some experience doing it they have the funds we have the will to do it and perhaps you know to think on a greater scale on the global scale rather than just think of where things can go to do that so i solution i think a lot of people to agree with you but that we have election cycles we have elections in two years steve you know it's seems to me if we go back you know what's going to you think's going to happen ok for the the democrats. wanted to deny obama's reelection but they failed are they going to now deny him a legacy are they going to do that now as the country goes over the fiscal cliff. it's a very good question so just just imagine for a second to john boehner and you want to work with president obama how do you do that if you've demonized him to the extent that you have to his base that's one of the things that's so destructive about the what the republicans have done over the last two to four years i don't see how they go back now and start working with president obama and you know to rachel's point which he was just saying ok you know

we can talk about the global economy and foreign investment stuff like that i think those are all really good ideas but every country has to wrestle with some very basic things regarding spending and taxes and we have a massive deficit in this country it's not one party's fault it's both parties fault to some extent and that's something that we have to wrestle with are we going to increase revenue are we going to cut spending we're going to do a little bit of both the republicans have given us absolutely no maneuverability on their legislation is necessarily to indicated yesterday that that's going to lead to english and to that it can't continue rachel. but the solution to that but the solution to that isn't necessarily domestic there's not just a domestic means of increasing government revenue and this idea of you know going through the cushions in the couch and shaking every taxpayer by his heels to to shake out that those last few few cents when he could maybe. children maybe it is ridiculous to actually ran away from the tax the rich rachel the top two percent

tax them a little bit more i mean i we've seen that in france are seen here in france how that doesn't work either because the rich can move the rich don't and it's a wide open world that the rich in france are taxed like zero and has decided to do taxes seventy five percent above a million revenue a year and they're going to move to belgium going to mode grandchildren when no one's saying seventy five percent just stay right we have thirteen percent tax ok. ok correct and that's the thing that's and you know in being in russia peter and your viewers who are in moscow understand that you know thirteen percent flat tax that couldn't broaden not that long ago is created when we're you know and economically we weren't in moscow and and we don't see but we don't see that mentality and in the united states we don't see this tax cutting mentality and we don't see in france either it's how can we squeeze more money out of the poor taxpayer and and instead of looking at other solutions and maybe things that are perhaps counter-intuitive and i think that is what the republican party has to do to follow the same old way of doing things and all the ideas that have been batted

around within the beltway bubble of the last several years it's just not going to cut it and if they want to make a comeback they going to have to do that as for working with barack obama well he has to work with them too and perhaps there needs to be compromise on both sides not just on the side of congress because they happen to have a majority ok steve there's a bomb i have a mandate now a strong mandate. well he has more of a mandate than george w. bush had eight years ago when he was reelected and george w. bush after that election came out and said now i've got some political capital and i've got to spend it he does have a mandate and i think the mandate for the president that gets elected is a lot more than for instance who necessarily controls the house of representatives after an election that's what the republicans are trying to assert now i just don't buy this idea that you know president obama is the one who has to who has to you know compromise he's been trying to compromise the last four years we've seen it's obvious what we've gotten him back in response from republicans he's evil he's not

even an american he was born in kenya you know all these ridiculous things it's not the president that's got to move it's the republicans and yes sure rachel we can try all kinds of things that go out and try to i'm not going to do this but i mean i don't know that that's really true it's that is not going to read it and i think that's not going to resolve the fiscal crisis that we have in this country we have a trillion dollars in debt every year that's being added to the total that is going to require some choices that's going to require more revenue and and spending cuts republicans have said even if that was ten to one they wouldn't accept that ten dollars in spending cuts for every one dollar in tax increases they wouldn't even accept that how do you go she ate with a group that has said that rachel go right ahead. well he's going to have to compromise if he can learn anything from parliamentary democracies like canada where the prime minister of canada stephen harper was elected with a minority government and even in the u.k. where there's a cohabitation right now between two parties that were elected to govern well

basically with without the two of them cooperating there wouldn't be they wouldn't be in government so basically what they can learn from that is that really even if you are elected to lead you still have to compromise and as the leader it's not it's not a sign of weakness if you're in a position where it's just a reality i mean brock obama is the president but and sure there's a democratic senate they've managed to hold on to the senate but that's my pet the public has not really and over the public has not elected a democrat it's always been trying to she was a little long as the congress was public and he's had designs on congress is the entire time he's been in the house he has to cooperate with them he doesn't have a choice does he because you know it's on the line here his legacy is on the line so unless he's a slightly distracted you know trying to corner the right williams was trying to get in i was alone really action well then how can we as citizens to get anything done i like to think you said you're always getting with john ok hang on hang on

what i was going to ok steve you know obama ran on a platform he has to come through we can't compromise so much cammy. you know it will do the president is one thing and that is pragmatic i think the president is going to do what he has to do also if he's out he is going to fulfill the promises in his platform that i think if we look at the phrase i wish we had another half an hour as i'm running out of time record thank you very much i want to thank my guests today in new york and in paris i want to thank our viewers for watching us here to see you next time and remember.

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